My e-mail to "Bill Clinton"

In light of the disappointing results in North Carolina and Indiana, I thought the time had come

to assess the inevitable - of who will win the nomination, and what November result it would

augur. I found no better forum to express these thoughts than in reply to yet another

fundraising appeal sent from "Bill Clinton" which I found in my e-mail box today:

I realize that Bill Clinton won't be reading this message and that what I write will not be highlighted in any future fundraising effort. But to whoever is reading this, let me make a couple of candid points:

I supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries because of the two remaining Democratic candidates I believed she was the only one who could mount a winning November campaign. To be sure, my assessment has not changed, and I am bitterly disappointed that my party has chosen slogans over substance and is all but certain to place the nomination in the hands of someone who is likely to lose everywhere except for Vermont and D.C. in November.

Nevertheless, assuming my assessment is correct, I want people like Bill and Hillary Clinton to be viable contributors to an effort to revitalize our party from what is likely to be the ash heap of a potential McCain landslide. I want our party to thoughtfully and intelligently scrutinize itself for failing to scrutinize Mr. Obama and to fall into the cesspool of identity politics that is likely to doom our chances in November, barring a total economic collapse which I, as a patriot before being a partisan, do not want to see. If Bill and Hillary Clinton see the wisdom of gracefully ceding the spotlight, they will have every right to remind our fellow Democrats of their potential mistake at the appropriate time. If they do not, then they will be deemed as "part of the problem."

Regrettably, the Democratic Party now faces one of two instruments of its own doom for 2008: A McGovern/Mondale type of electoral wipeout, or self-destruction by its own infighting. We as a party have shown ourselves to recover from the former; we will not revive so easily in the aftermath of the latter.

Senator Clinton, I applaud you for having put up the fight. But you are also my Senator, and I want you to be effective in that role - both in working for New York and in working to make our party competitive again. You seriously damage your ability to complete both tasks by keeping up this futile cause...to say nothing of your chances of returning to the arena in 2012 where you could easily champion yourself as both a "stateswoman" and visionary to lead us back from the wilderness. I beg you to consider these consequences.

Sincerely,

[The Brahmin]

Returning...at Random

It's been a while, so a few random musings:

The Obama/Jeremiah Wright thing:

I think I'll have to eschew false modesty and say that the Wright thing exposes the concerns I've had about him - or perhaps moreso - his cult following - all along. It's not that I think particularly less of him because of Wright, but because his befuddled response to the whole thing underscores what I thought about him all along. McCain has a racist, anti-Catholic preacher backing him...Obama says nothing. Even when McCain "denounced" Bill Cunningham for the Hussein hiss a few months ago, he lied about having never met him before. Obama says nothing.

I continue to clash with Obama supporters - and a few of them are starting to acknowledge that it wasn't exactly Carvillian strategy to label every Democrat who opposed him (or simply wouldn't support him) as "racist." The chickens are coming home...oh, did I say that?

In one conversation I pointed out that I do not think Obama will carry anything other than Vermont, while not mentioning that I had offered such a prognostication on this blog. Let me clarify or amend. Obama will win D.C. and Vermont. That's six electoral votes in the kitty. FEWER than McGovern or Mondale.

The Ranger season ended yesterday with an overtime loss in Pittsburgh. I eat my words (not uttered here) that I thought it was a break they did not draw Montreal in the second round. The Penguins are a very talented team and they will face Detroit in the Finals, imho. Detroit and Pittsburgh. 1985. I spent the spring and summer in those two cities, respectively, on two coops for my now officially defunct alma mater, Antioch College. Detroit was (and is) unsafe to the point where you can't walk half a block. Not surprisingly, it is impossible to get around without your own set of wheels. It has a large drug scene and a rather affected, closed-minded intelligentsia. Pittsburgh's people are the friendliest of all U.S. city dwellers in the country. It is manageable to get around. Good nightlife. I saw Pittsburghers in stark relief to their cross-state citizens from Philly during my largely miserable 15 months in State College, Pennsylvania some years after I lived in Pittsburgh. Despite the tough series loss, I know who I will be rooting for in both the Eastern Conference and Stanley Cup finals.

Speaking of the Rangers. My trip to Scotland is less than 3 weeks away. Toward the end of the run I will be stopping off in Glasgow. Now what to do. A rivalry which apparently makes Crankees/Red Sux look like a somewhat heated game of third grade marbles is that of the "Old Firm" - Rangers and Celtic, both football (soccer) clubs based in Glasgow. Now, I thought it might be a cool thing to visit pubs which cater to the fans of each respective team. Visiting the Rangers pub, I would wear my New York Rangers cap and claim some sort of "honorary supporter" status. However, half my ancestry is that which constitutes the core base of Celtic support - this would be mentioned in the Celtic pub. No protestant blood here.

However, one surfs the web and finds just ugly sectarian bigotry on both sides. Rangers' fight song is "Billy Boys":

Hullo! Hullo!
We are the Billy Boys!
Hullo! Hullo!
You'll know us by our noise!
We're up to our knees in Fenian blood,
Surrender or you'll die!
We are the Brigton Billy Boys!

Celtic players also wear pictures of the Pope underneath their jerseys, apparently.

My own personal conclusion, aside from considerations of personal safety, is to give this "rivalry" no endorsement at all and to visit neutral pubs only.

I saw "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay" the other night. It's the kind of flick you have to be in a silly mood to like, and one you'd love if you smoked a lot of pot beforehand - in other words, probably one I'd love before I became an officer of the Courts.

In today's New York Times Forest City Ratner has been connected to a "flip flop" of a certain Yonkers councilwoman from "no" to "yes" on one of its nefarious land grabs up there. Hurrah. Mr. Prosecutor, please board Metro North, then take a downtown 4 or 5 from Grand Central to Borough Hall and stay there until you find me some heads to scalp from Community Board 2, the City Council and (especially) Farty Marty Markowitz for similar offenses.

We're up to our knees in No-Fault files,
Must bill or we will die!
We are the Brooklyn Brahmin Boys!

Obama's speech

I've had a few thoughts spinning around about the Obama speech last week and they generally reduce themselves to the maxim that it was very good, although it does not ease my cynicism about him being nothing more than a very new, very slick model of a "genuine" politician who is still a politician; however, another blog I glanced at earlier today compels me to put this foot forward:

A blog by an African American woman commenting on interracial dating zeroed in on the notion of Caucasian men dating black women. One of the more outrageous points she made was that white men date black women because they want to go out with women who they once "enslaved" because they either (a) like to feel like they're in control or (b) they feel inadequate around their own and because of their low self-esteem, fall back on someone "beneath" them.

She who is new to the Brahmin's life happens to be a woman of color. As of now, she doesn't know about this blog, as I suspect I don't know skillions of things about her life...including the possibility that she might have her own blog. And as our fledgling relationship goes forward, I reflect privately about what aspects of my life I choose to "unpeel" for her as a means of extending trust and sharing soul -- telling her I have this blog really isn't high on the list.

One of the things I liked about Obama's speech was his pointing out both the roots of black "anger" as well as the sources of white "resentment" - specifically citing the fact that so many whites feel that they should not be made to atone for the sins of people who have a common skin color but absolutely no ancestry.

So exactly who have I "enslaved"? I'm the descendant of Jewish Ukranian serfs and Irish peasants. And you bet, there are statements relatives on both sides made about African Americans that would make Mr. Obama (and no doubt, my current better half) "cringe." But my "slave" is a college graduate who works in corporate management. I think I could have done better living out that supposed fantasy...beginning with having bloodlines to the Thurmond family that nature denied me.

The last "significant" significant other I had was white as the driven snow with piercing blue eyes to match--if you pressed your ear to the dens of certain factions within her family, you'd hear whispers of anti-Semitism. And there was no urging for jungle fever when that ended. Actually, from a professional standpoint, my current one is doing better than the last one.

Lastly, why does a black woman need to categorize herself as "beneath" another class of people? Professional victimization. Something I saw all too well at my alma mater. Kudos to Obama for calling it out. And shame on those who seem, perhaps, to have so much emptiness in their own love lives so as to spew shallow pablum about the love lives of others.

The Brahmin

Hypocrisy makes Fine Whine

A columnist for the supermarket rag, The Park Slope Courier who, as I mentioned in passing previously, manages to write for a Brooklyn publication while living in Florida. Could be that his brand of Goebbels-style pro-Republican propaganda doesn't have enough adherents in Brooklyn so that the powers that be who publish the paper could find someone local to write it, but he (or the paper) more than make up for it since he signs off his article every time by identifying himself by what appears to be an e-mail address but which is obviously bogus. I tried responding to one or more of his columns but the e-mail bounced each time.

Anyway, in his latest missive (typically dominated by his stalker-like obsession with Hillary Clinton, who he has savaged for such pressing global issues of the day as to what baseball team she supports), he writes as follows: "I don’t drink at all nor do I talk about alcoholic beverages. At the least I must be average."

That got me thinking. Yes, holding out a phony e-mail address to delude those not inclined to speak out that one welcomes open dialogue doesn't stop the rest of us from thinking.



Here's the same columnist on 12.28.06:


"I’ve been looking back at my notes for 2006 and I found that, besides words, we did a lot of talking with our hands. For example, were still shaking our fist at France and telling them where they can stick their fancy wines and expensive perfumes."

OK, so you talk about booze. Now, never having been out for a pop with this man (which would be hard, since I've never been in Florida and have no idea whether this man's ever been to Brooklyn, though he obviously knows a right-wing newspaper publisher here), I couldn't possibly question his veracity as to his being teetotal.

Er...could I?

Same columnist in November 2006:

I’ve been attending these wine tasting gatherings for many years and I can recall the days, not that long ago, when the vino inventory aboard cruise ships consisted mostly of French wines. Sure there were a few wines from Italy, some of the many wines from California, and a bit of various brands from a handful of scattered countries here and there. But mostly, the liquid grapes aboard the vessels were from France. Times have changed. The Star Princess, a British cruise ship, boasts an inventory of exactly one hundred different white, red, blush, sparkling and dessert wines. The Wine waiters distributed a printout and I took the time to count how many and where they are from. How many do you think were French? Half? A quarter? Nope. Of the one hundred different brands and varieties only fifteen were French. The great majority of the people aboard the Star were Americans and I think this is a statement on the subject of how our countrymen feel about supporting the French.

To paraphrase his signature line:

I am Brooklyn Brahmin and I drink. I talk about drinking. I don't lie about it. I really live in Brooklyn. And while I don't care to leave an email address out there in the public domain, if I chose to do so it would be a legit one.

Splitsville for Spitzer

A couple of thoughts on the Spitzer H-bomb today:

1. He not only has to resign, but he probably will, notwithstanding the fact that he did not do so today. Undoubtedly, he is using resignation as a bargaining chip to stay out of jail or at the very least wind up at a Club Fed instead of Leavenworth.

2. To those typically in ideological alignment with the Brahmin who might be tempted to cite David Vitter or Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, I say, yeah, both should have resigned. To reduce this to simple partisan point-notching, we can say (hopefully) Spitzer did the right thing; the others did not.

3. David Paterson is on the precipice of further cementing a remarkably charmed political career. Born legally blind, he lucked into Dinkins' rise to power in the mid to late '80's, then squeezed into the State Senate on the death of an incumbent; successfully knocked off the Minority Leader (Marty Connor of the Heights, who I met more than once at Eamonn Doran on Montague Street), and now is about to reach Cloud 9 in Albany...thanks to "Client 9."

4. No one had a shinier and more of a crusading pro-reform reputation as an elected official than Eliot Spitzer. It underscores what this business does to people. Does this mean Barack Obama was partaking in the world's oldest profession across state lines? No, but one has to wonder about this Rezko thing a bit more. That might be unfair, but it does give at least the amateur political class (to which I supposedly belong) a very big pause about the people we follow.

Blooper Tuesday

The other day the Brahmin was woken by his clock radio to hear 1010 WINS (which I only listen to when NPR is in the middle of pledge week; but frankly after what I describe herein I think I'll go back to Mike & Mike on ESPN-1050). It gave a "nugget" (or perhaps, more accurately, a dried snowpea) on the Texas primary today. The reporter talked about how all the momentum was with Obama and just to prove it, it did an 8-second snippet with a presumed Texas voter, preceded by the reporter's assertion that the man had been for Hillary but had switched to Obama. Then we hear the guy saying, "I don't like Hillary personally. She's mean-spirited."

If you're like any regular participant in the crypto-democratic process we call the modern day US of A, especially if (like me) you wound up devolving to the two-party system over 95 per cent of the time, then granted, you wind up voting for the lesser of two evils. A lot. But saying someone is "mean-spirited" kind of suggests that you never were going to support the person in the first place.

And what balanced this interview in the 1010 WINS report? Nothing.

Pray tell, if come the fall, anyone does a story on the general election and they run an interview with a voter saying he doesn't like McCain because either (a) he's too old; (b) he was one of the Keating Five or (c) he looks like Burl Ives on crystal-meth, and its unbalanced by any countering view, guess what Glen Beck, Sean Hannity or Bill-O will do. If you hadn't answered the question before finishing reading the sentence, then I guess this blog is being read in North Korea. Thanks, New York Philarmonic.

The point being, that WINS farce is all that needs to be said as to the slant of the media in the Democratic field to date. In the law we call that slam dunk summary judgment.

And at last, the media is starting to get it. Lo and behold, the change you can believe in apparently made its way to the Canadian consulate a couple of weeks ago, and the Guru himself is groveling.

The weather today is very bad in Ohio. And let me assure you - there's not much worse than a wintry raw day in Ohio, save the odd "Supertrain" rerun. I lived through three of them. The Hillaryites are the die-hards. The Obama folk are the younger siblings of the Deaniacs who disappeared somewhere in the snow between Davenport and Des Moines in January '04 and who were back to their Madden NFL routine on the first Tuesday of the following November...ESPECIALLY in Ohio.

As for Texas, not much I can offer unique wisdom on. The one thing that is interesting is that Hillary could win the popular vote but the present-day scion of Banquo's (er...Rezko?) Ghost could come away with more delegates (by the way, that's exactly what happened in Nevada, but no one says anything about it). Kind of undercuts all that "will of the people" bit, don't ya think?

------

Eastenders is a coffeehouse in Riverhead, New York. I often get stranded there for a couple of hours on a weekday morning because the Suffolk County courts are infinitely more efficient than their downstate brethren and because there are only three trains daily running east of Ronkonkoma on the Greenport branch. I down a refill of Java recuperating from the 7:41 out of Flatbush Avenue to get to a conference which either gets adjourned or resolved in 10 minutes. Then I read the paper, my Scotland guidebook, do work, or text (business and personal). Clearly its a musical place which has an open mic. Sometimes the occasional goof off comes in and plays a few bars of Mozart or Axel-F from the 48 Hours movie. Actually, one person played a little bit of both today. A nice place if you're ever out there.

On the SNY message boards (where I masterfully disguise myself as "RHodges42") someone posted an open letter to Isiah Thomas. He prefaced the letter saying, "I don't know much about basketball, but..." The Brahmin replied by stating that either he and Mr. Thomas had a lot in common, or that the poster had incredibly low self-esteem.

A bit untimely, but a good one: As you know, Bobby Knight retired from coaching. He thought it was time to throw in the chair.

Glad to hear 97-year old John Wooden is out of danger. Also good that the prognosis for Sillies' first base coach Davey Lopes is excellent. Hopefully, Bobby Murcer will meet a kinder fate than Tug McGraw (who for some reason my father, who deemed his contempt for sports as a badge of honor, liked).

The Brahmin hopes to see "In Bruges" this weekend, pending approval from she who is on his arm nowadays. At an otherwise nondescript East Village Bistro last Saturday following our viewing of "The Seagull", we each had mussels (different sauces for each of us). I regaled in a story of my one and only visit to Bruges as a youth, as part of our entire menage of four. We were passing between Brussels and the coast (one way or the other, I don't remember). In any event we went into a local restaurant. Now the one thing my father possibly loathed more than professional athletics was onions (I'm sorry he never made it to Bermuda - after I visited there several years ago with an ex I was delighted to assure him that contrary to common terminology the local onion had been long extinct there, but I digress). So he would not eat mussels. Which made me and my family the only four people in a restaurant of probably 250 diners not eating them that day, from what I was able to observe.

Proud to say my dinner companion had more courage. She had never eaten snails before Saturday. But never underestimate the persuasive power of...

The Brahmin

(P.S. - She liked them. Or so she said.)

Brahmin on the Bagpipes

It's official - The Brahmin will be in the U.K. from May 22 through June 2. With the aid of a handy Britrail Pass (to come in the mail soon), I plan to head north to the land of Robert the Bruce, Sir Walter Scott and a certain lake-dwelling monster apparently J.J. Abrams is too afraid to enliven. Hopefully I'll be able to squirm for a digital camera between now and then so I can get the pics to come on here.

According to Yahoo, romantic prospects for my astrological sign were absolutely dismal on March 1. Let's just say that events in the Brahmin's life that day proved that perhaps online astrologers are a little less accurate than...hmm, I don't know, New Hampshire Primary exit pollers. This is where the Brahmin draws the line at revealing personal details to the cyberuniverse.

William F. Buckley is being lionized, and I certainly don't blame right-wingers for doing so. His patrician verbose eccentricities made for fun watching, but I would choose a number of people on the right as being far more effective advocates for their point of view - William Safire, David Gergen or George Will, for example. I guess what troubles me about his canonization are a number of things: National Review, for instance, has been at one time or another a hotbed of anti-Semitism (holocaust denier Joseph Sobran was an editor there) and apologist - at a minimum - for racism (it opposed lifting the Jim Crow laws in the South and Buckley himself was a supporter of South African apartheid). Utterly ridiculous is the notion that Buckley, for all his wordiness and haughty mannerism, was a gentleman during debate. You Tube is overflowing with examples of his fit with Gore Vidal during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention ("Listen, you queer, I'll sock you in the goddamned face and you'll stay plastered" - did he learn that in the Yale debate club?).

It's Spring Training. And already the Mets are a MASH unit.

I saw Chekhov's "The Seagull" in the East Village last night. Sort of an odd, distant blocking, but a very good set design and solid deliveries from the cast (though I caught a reference to the word "telephone" during the dialogue - I've got to run that against the original script; considering that Chekhov died in 1904 and the play is set in a rural wooded quarter of Russia).

March has come in like a lion. It always goes out with baseball starting, and me a year older. One out of two ain't bad. In baseball, as a hitter, that makes you...well, no one's ever done anything like that (though if they build more bandboxes like Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, someone might).

The Brahmin

I went back to Ohio...And My Alma Mater Was Gone

Previously I posted in passing about my June 2007 visit to Antioch College, initially intending to coincide (to the exact date) with the 20th anniversary of my graduation, but instead getting caught up in the hysterics about the sudden announcement to close the college this coming June.

Since then, millions of dollars were raised (most of them in a tent behind the campus' Main Building during that very Reunion weekend for which The Brahmin was present) and the Board of Trustees "reversed" its decision to close, subject to "negotiation" with a coalition of alumni, faculty and assorted "stakeholders" to release control of the College to them, instead of having it remain part of the Antioch University parasite which had slowly been destroying its host from I guess the late 1960's through my time there (1984-87) and to the present date. When I attended Antioch, enrollment was about one-fifth of what it was in 1970. Today it is less than half of what it was when I went there.

Last week the Trustees again announced that they were sticking with their original decision and closing the College. Barring either a not-yet diagnosed and incredibly aggressive disease or something like a bus accident, I will survive my alma mater. That is not supposed to be.

Tragically, it comes as little surprise, as I hinted at in my earlier piece and may choose to muse about as more information becomes available. I will only add for now that the original decision to close (June '07) was in the College's hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio...when students were away for the summer.

The decision to irrevocably pull the plug on Antioch was made while students were on campus. Except it was announced in Los Angeles.

Again, little surprise.


The Brahmin

Word Association 2/24

Macbeth - With Patrick Stewart, at BAM Harvey. Already sold out. Drat.

Lady Macbeth - Er...Michelle Obama?

Michelle Obama - She loves her country for the first time in her adult life now that her husband, an Illinois State Senator less than three years ago, is about to slay a political dynasty. Now, I'm about the last person to see eye-to-eye with the right wing blogosphere or hate radio, but Jeez, Michelle, no love after you went from the South Side to Princeton and Harvard Law?

Harvard Law - I'll always remember fondly Shay's, a pub in Cambridge, where I found myself one Indian Summer afternoon (Jeez again, 17 years ago??), filleting a Harvard Law Review article on plea bargaining for a graduate seminar on judicial politics I was taking at SUNY-Albany.

Plea Bargaining - An idea for Roger Clemens whose time has come.

"Our time has come" - Mr. Obama has said this a number of times during his countless victory speeches the last several weeks. Now it's a statement of fact that Jesse Jackson said this at one of his convention speeches (either 1984 or 1988). I suppose that's racist, right? Or won't he try that one on McCain?

McCain - OK, OK, the New York Times may have gotten a little carried away with that piece on Thursday. Where is the righteous outrage coming from Hannity & Co. re false stories about Obama being a Madrassa-raised Muslim (lest you think the Brahmin is incapable of defending Obama when the facts warrant)?

New York Times - Has an expanded theater section today in the Arts & Leisure section pointing out that Chekhov's "The Seagull" is playing in the East Village. The Brahmin is interested.

Chekhov - Star Trek's unapologetic Russkie ensign. But how do you explain his line, ridiculing Scotty's fondness for Scotch in "The Trouble with Tribbles," claiming, "It was inwented by a little old lady from Leningrad"...some 400 years after that city was renamed in favor of the one it has always had?

Scotch - Still getting nowhere planning my Scotland itinerary. So many destinations, so little time planned. Gotta get a distillery or two in.

Distillery - OK, this is a stretch. But this is true. A couple of years ago I had to arrange for a deposition of some non-party witnesses in Boston. There is a local court reporting (stenography) agency called Jack Daniels. No kidding. At 4 pm every business day it must be uttered from one Boston calendar clerk to another, "Are you ordering Jack Daniels?" Talk about figuratively speaking...

The Brahmin

Chez Oskar

http://chezoskar.com

The Brahmin dined here last night. Lobster Bisque, free range chicken, and at his beautiful companion's urging, a flourless chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. Another reason to hit the gym again. :[



Every table was filled, but the staff doesn't rush you. When we arrived (thankfully, I'd made a reservation), we were told our table wasn't ready, and to sit at the bar. We hadn't even had our toast yet but our table was ready. Order amidst chaos.



This Fort Greene gem is highly recommended.

Word Association

Santana - The acquisition that made this Met fan feel like after months of agonizing cervical herniations, his neck had been snapped clean by a chiropractor. I can't stop that (Carlos) Santana song, "Winning" from playing in my head.



Winning - Looks like Huckabee won Kansas.



Kansas - I forget whether it's still against the law to teach evolution there. If you answer "false" on an exam there to a true or false question, "Is the Earth less than 6,000 years old", do you fail?



Fail - I think there's a picture of Isiah Thomas next to the dictionary definition of the word, no?



Dictionary - What the President calls a speech instructor.



Instructor - What McNamee served as for Mrs. Clemens (allegedly) so she could pose for Sports Illustrated. I assume Rog did the honors to her posterior to protect marital sanctity.



Sanctity - Now that Romney's out, does he still think that there's a sanctity of life? Or does he think what he thought before he opened his first focus group?



Focus - the Mets sign Santana, and within 48 hours there's a youtube video about Pedro Martinez officiating at a cockfight at least two years ago, where that activity is perfectly legal. I mean, can we focus?



Cockfights - Some people are outraged that a foreign country allows this sort of thing. I assume that means they all don't hunt and staple moose and bear heads to their den walls, and no doubt it means they refuse to visit Spain because it has bullfighting.



Bullfighting - One of my favorite jokes:



A Texan, on vacation in Spain, goes to a bullfight. Near the end of the bullfight, drained because he bought the cheap ticket forcing him to sit in the sun, leaves the bullring as the crowd roars while the matador is nearing the kill. He walks to the restaurant across the street. The maitre d' greets him with a wide smile:



"Senor! Congratulations! You are our first customer today! That means you win the 'Matador Special', our house delicacy!!!"



"Uh, Matador what? Naw, I just want a nice juicy steak and some sangria," replies the Texan.



The maitre d' wags his finger in disapproval. "No, no, Senor! You have not been to Spain unless you have had this marvelous opportunity to feast your taste buds on our famous Matador Special."



Weakly, the Texan agrees. In a few minutes, with flamenco guitars and maraccas in tow, the "Matador Special" is wheeled out to his table. He stares down in disbelief. He has never seen such a dish. Suspiciously, he cuts a tiny slice and takes a nibble. Then a full piece. He is in heaven - this is better than any steak back home in Dallas. He hogs the remainder down in no time. The natives "ole" and cheer at the sight of this new-found foreign convert.



"Mister," the speechless tourist implores the maitre d'. "You gotta tell me what that was! Delicious! Best meal I've had in my life! What is the 'Matador Special'?"



"Senor, the 'Matador Special' is the testicles of the bull who was just killed in today's fight!"



The pedestrian shock is not enough to stop the Texan from changing his plans. He cancels his return flight and stays for the rest of bullfighting season, always making himself first to go to the restaurant when the fight is over. For the next three weeks, he feasts on a daily helping of the 'Matador Special', savoring it more and more with every bite.



Then one day, the tourist walks into the restaurant. The wait staff, normally full of smiles and enthusiasm, has long faces and shake their heads.



"What's wrong with y'all"? demands the Texan. "You know, giddy up - get me mah table and fix me mah 'Matador Special'."



"Er, Senor," replies the desperate maitre d'. "We have an excellent fresh paella today..."



"DON'T GET MAH DANDER UP!", growls the angry Texan, grabbing his erstwhile Spanish friend by the sleeves. "GET ME MAH MATADOR SPECIAL...NOW!"



Reluctantly, the maitre d' nods and instructs the staff. Several minutes later (without guitars and maraccas) the dish is wheeled out. On the plate is an item about one-tenth the size of what the Texan had been feasting on for three weeks straight.

"NOW WHAT HERE IS THIS??" screams the Texan to the still-subdued staff, now almost foaming in the mouth. "I can barely see this!! You call this the 'Matador Special'???!!"

"Senor," says the maitre d', shrugging his shoulders. "The Matador cannot win every fight."

The Brahmin

Barack Mondale

My first Presidential election (or the first one in which I was eligible to vote) was 1984. I voted for Walter Mondale, who got annhialated, losing 49 states. Sometimes, I wonder about whether the counsel I got from an NYU College Democrats volunteer at the beginning of that year was right.

The New York primary was two or three days after my 18th birthday that year, as I recall. Realizing this, in either late '83 or January '84 I noticed the NYU College Democrats doing a voter registration drive in the student union building on LaGuardia Place and I explained my situation to the young man...ergo, could I register now, and preserve my right to vote on Primary Day? No, I was told. As a result, I could not and did not vote for Gary Hart. Mondale won, and he was toast.

Let's not underestimate the importance of the 1984 election. Though Reagan had won a convincing electoral college majority four years earlier, his margin in the popular vote was not all that impressive and there had been a major recession in his first term. James Watt had been sent packing; the administration had taken its flak for trying to declare ketchup a vegetable and homeless people were everywhere. Would Reagan have won re-election regardless of who the Democratic nominee was? Probably. But just suppose if a Gary Hart (or another) managed to muster even the electoral vote total of an '88 Dukakis or '96 Dole. Would Democrats have merely been content to hold hearings on Iran Contra? Would we have forgotten the Prez laying a wreath for the butchers of Bitburg? Would Reagan have even nominated Bork (which planted the seed of the idea that his successor could get away with Thomas)? Even the "rehabilitated" post-'06 Democrats concede that impeachment of the current Bush is "off the table" before taking office, and fund and re-fund the war. Now the high ground they claimed on spending is compromised as they were complicit in giving $600 handouts so people can pay off credit card debt.

The point is, the "majority party" status Democrats enjoyed from the New Deal was challenged by Nixon, but eviscerated by Reagan. They didn't have to win in '84 to get off the ropes. But with Mondale, they were Apollo Creed against Ivan Drago. Thanks to Mondale, Clinton couldn't win on a dysfunctional health care system, depression-like economic conditions outside of the major cities and a foreign policy checked by an OPEC veto power. He needed the death penalty and Sister Souljah.

Now, the media, which has soft-footed Barack Obama for four years, has crossed the line into institutional cheerleader for the man who talks about "change" but won't change his specific-bereft stump speech. Forget about whether this is a Karl Rove plot (I wouldn't rule it out, but that's not the point). Forget the fact that in an earlier posting I noted an unpleasant encounter with some of his earliest "true believers" who felt compelled to call me a racist and a Nazi for supporting a reliable fascist like Joe Biden. That could be anything from too much alcohol to whispers from others telling them that I wasn't a Yankee fan.

What it is about is the rush to a failing 11th grade civics essay about how Obama is more "electable" than Hillary. Yes, we know there are people who would drool to vote against Hillary. It's the reason I did not support her in the first place (and a reason why I would have gone with Edwards last Tuesday if only he'd lasted a few more days). But the undeniable facts are these: The "Hillary haters" all are out in the open, they're not going to grow in number, and not even the RNC needs to waste its resources on finding other reasons to "hate" her. Maybe Diebold will cook something up, but the facts are, the people who won't vote for Hillary under any circumstances is not going to go up.

Now let's turn to Obama, his middle name (which I'd wager about 90 per cent of the country doesn't know but will have whistling in their heads when Zell Miller or someone of his ilk hisses it throughout a 20-minute prime time missive in Minneapolis this August), and the "M" word ("Muslim" or "Madrassa", take your pick). Yes, this was supposedly "shot down" before Iowa and New Hampshire, but that's the point - it was done at a time when those citizens willing to grudgingly to give 10 minutes of their time to presidential politics after Labor Day '08 were still watching "Lost" reruns on slow Britney days. Kerry had to deal with "swift boaters" every race he ran for the Senate before '04; it did not stop him from standing toe-to-toe with a wartime President four months out.

Notice that I did not point out the fact that Obama speaks (eloquently) a lot without saying anything - a valid criticism. Or that he has a tendency to vote "present" on contentious issues - another valid criticism. And I did not point out the fact that Obama is at least partly African American - a completely invalid criticism.

The potential pool of Obama-loathers is vast, and it will fill up. Very quickly.

If Hillary is the nominee, admittedly, McCain likely wins by a margin between what Bush won over Kerry and what Bush "won" over Gore. But if the economy continues to tank, she CAN win.

If Obama is the nominee, he likely loses everything except Vermont.

49 states.

Another Mondale.

MMVIII

Happy new year (long belatedly).

Last night I came across a book which I commend to all. From Dumbo Press right here in Brooklyn: "The Benevolent Accomplishments of George Walker Bush." I just couldn't put it down. It has stellar reviews from Blair and Rice. I urge everyone not only to get this book and read it, but then write a lengthy paper on this work. If I had still been following an old career path and were teaching American government, I would put this book on my syllabus for any advanced-level class on the modern presidency. Read this book.

And now some word association:

Bobby Fischer - The chess genius turned rabid anti-Semite. Made his claim to fame in (and eventually died in) Rekjavik, Iceland.

Rekjavik: Passed through there once coming to and from Europe. The Icelandic national drink is called Brenavin, which is something like liquid rye bread. The topography of largely volcanic Iceland looks something like the moon.

The Moon: Did you know that in a footnote to a U.S. Court of Appeals decision, there was reference to watching "Space: 1999" reruns as a form of possible torture?

Torture: My man Biden (see an earlier post) is now out. Oprah and Tyra are sure doing a great job as presidential gatekeepers. Why is Edwards the only one of the three left who is making it clear Guantanamo should be closed?

Guantanamo: Even though its under the firm control of the U.S. military, the Supremes have held that Guantanamo is not part of the United States. It's in Cuba. The only Spanish-speaking country from which its emigres are not considered "illegal immigrants", even though they have no more documentation than Mexicans, Salvadorans, Dominicans and the like.

Dominicans: I want Willie Randolph to do to Jose Reyes this year exactly what the manager did to "Willie Mays Hayes" in Major League. Hit a pop up, then hit the ground and give him 20.

Major League: The star pitcher came out of the California Penal League. In view of the recent hearings, that may have been prophetic.

Prophetic movies: Who can watch Reality TV this morning and not say that Howard Beale and Network didn't have it spot-on?

The Brahmin